Every Wasted Moment
by Myaru
Summary: FE10 - He said he would pull Altina to the heavens and give her a taste of eternity, but as with many things, it was not meant to be.
1. Every Wasted Moment

**Every Wasted Moment  
By:** Amber Michelle

Inspired by Gauntlet theme #32, "I kept your tie," and there will be a second part someday. There's a minor reference to _Call of the Heron_.

**Summary:** He said he would pull Altina to the heavens and give her a taste of eternity.

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Once, Altina married a man for love - not his beauty, as her opponents suggested, nor his voice, which he would have indulged her with as friend, if not husband. Lehran was generous; he had everything and nothing, a goddess by his side, another enamored with him, flitting to his shoulder and dashing away, favors in her wake - cherry blossoms, gossamer thread, diamonds like dust. Altina didn't know what she herself offered to him. A sword arm, when divine grace allowed him the walk of battlefields unscathed?

Earth, instead of heaven.

A child he created with words whispered in her ear, his desire a river running deep and warm within her.

She kept a lock of his hair in a cedar box, tied at one end with a black silk ribbon, a smooth length still perfect, neat, a decade after it was cut, each hair so fine it disappeared when held to the light. Three feathers hid in another, long as her arm, sleek, black, buried beneath her wedding dress in a chest at the bottom of the cathedral, where she remembered them only sometimes as she lay alone on a bed they once shared and recalled the way his wings brushed her shoulders, her ankles. Their daughter, now four, reached for the sky when black birds winged past her and chased their flocks when they alighted in the garden.

_I'm a bird! I'll fly_!

And if that twisted Altina's vocal chords into a knot, she could still smile, and clap, and tell her that was right - someday she would wing among the stars.

When her daughter greeted the new consort with a lilting _father_ and ran to his arms, the pressure behind Altina's eyes, the tightness of her skin, the burning acid in her throat, made it impossible to swallow. Her lips stayed firmly closed against the words that welled up in her throat like bile. She'd made a promise to the dragon king, who appeared to escort her husband to his new home. He was a shadow taller than Lehran and without wings, his clan emblazoned on his forehead in red. He looked down at the cradle when he spoke to Altina, gazed at their daughter, said she was a beautiful child-- but what else could be expected of the issue of the heron clan?

Find a new husband, Dheginsea told her. Never reveal the babe's heritage.

The child looked like her, Altina realized: indigo hair curled around her shoulders, eyes of gold. Her arms and legs were still short, plump, but they would grow to be long, slender, and strong. It was her hands that reflected the other half of her parentage-- her fingers had a tapered look to them, like the slant of a wing, and the shape of her eyes would be narrow like his.

He named her _Sarai_ when he held her with both hands, her newborn cries rending the camphor-laden air of the birthing chamber. Sarai for the first woman, for the issue of his queen's womb, and he made her name a song in the oldest of tongues, the one only he and the goddess still lived to share. Altina remembered the way the lamp light brightened when his voice danced the notes, the sheen on his hair turning gold from brown, his skin a soft glow like the moon. The goddess shined her light upon him when he sang, it was said; some went so far as to claim he was a god.

_If I were a god_, Lehran told her when he heard that story, _I would_--

What?

_I_ _would pull you to the heavens and give you a taste of eternity_.

She'd traced the outline of his lips when he said that, smiling. Did she not have the privilege of tasting him whenever she liked? That was good enough. More than enough.

Sometimes Altina forgot an eternity to her was merely a day for Eternal Lehran, or perhaps an hour. He touched her every moment, found her every hours to place a kiss on her lips, her cheek, her temple, as if he thought she would disappear the moment he turned his back. He stole her paperwork and lured her to the bedchamber, woke her at night to take her again. _Some day_, he said-- _someday I will remember this and regret every wasted moment_.

Altina had not understood then, but she watched Sarai lavish her affection on the wrong man - it was Kerria rose her earthly child chose, fat, five-petaled yellow blossoms bigger than her hands - and saw only wasted moments, days, years.

Lehran was no longer of heaven, no longer apart. He could be reached. All she had to do was stretch a little farther, call a little more loudly. What did Altina care if he sang the goddess's hymns? It was his heart she married - his heavy-lidded, lazy smiles in the morning, the way he covered her with his wings when she was cold, his hands beneath her dress, between her thighs, his face against her swollen stomach, ear catching every sound and every heartbeat of the child he longed for and yet only gazed upon once, when he named her with the most precious word in his memory.

These moments did not have to be wasted. Perhaps he would remember that, if he saw them again. Just once.


	2. Flight

**II. Flight  
By:** Amber Michelle

_This is so angsty. I can't get over it. Also, I'm not sure this is an appropriate follow-up, since the style is so different from the first, but I haven't decided what to do about that yet._

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The day had nearly ended when a servant from the palace came to summon Lehran back to the city, and he did not spread his wings to fly over the valley to the city walls until the sun was half-set, a crescent crowning the peak of Goldoa's highest western mountain. It lit his way without heat, sending his shadow skittering over the green and yellow weaving of the treetops until they broke against the face of the mesa upon which the walls of the capitol rose to forbid entrance. It was a place of high, arched windows and tall, carved columns, the buildings all sandstone, all dust and dry wood scent, and the dragons uniformly dark, streaks of brown and green and dark gray from up high, organized on the streets according to which direction they walked - left to go eastward, right to go west. Similar rules governed the palace, but he kept to the center of the corridors once he landed and let the servants move out of his way.

The summons took him in the far wing of the palace, where the royal family lived and their guests rested when persons other than dragons were granted access to the city. He knew it well - the polished floors, here a dark gray, lamps with jade fixtures, curtains dark shades of red and plum, echoed in the runners, which were anchored precisely center in every corridor. Lehran counted doors, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, until he reached the one that was his when he was only a guest and turned the handle to go inside.

A splash of yellow on the round table greeted him, kerria rose arranged in a shallow earthenware bowl around the thick pillar of an unlit white candle. The purple curtains were wide open, the windows veiled by lace and gilded by the fading sunset. Her shadow was slender when lit from the back, her hair a long river down her back the color of an evening sky, twisted into submission and tied at the end with silk, and if he hadn't known her every curve by memory, or recognized the backward thrust of her shoulders, Lehran would have remembered her bright floral scent, deepened by leather and feathers, and the green tea in a pot on the table behind the flowers.

Altina.

The handle slipped from Lehran's fingers, rattled, loud and brass; the door closed. She turned around.

She said his name.

What was this - a fever dream, a trick? Had he found a blade at last and opened his veins, only to be greeted by a vision he wanted to forget?

She said his name again, and Lehran jerked his wings, knocked the cabinet behind him, and bent them close to his back. Her hand curled inward over her stomach, and his throat tightened until he thought it would spasm and make him throw up. "I-- I did not know you intended to visit."

He looked at the table because it wouldn't look back, saw her cup was already turned aright, half empty. A bit of yellow peeked over the rim, reflecting the flowers. "It came as a surprise to everyone," she said, and her shadow advanced upon him, one inch closer, two. "Dheginsea was not in when I arrived, so I will apologize later."

That explained the summons; Dheginsea knew his wishes on this matter, and would have seen them granted if he were present. "I'm sure that will not be necessary."

Silence. A hawk keened outside, past the walls; her beorc ears wouldn't hear, but Lehran imagined its wings spread to glide on invisible currents of air and wanted to do the same. His flight to the palace could have been days ago, for how little he remembered the cut of air between his feathers, above and below, and the emptiness beneath his feet - a chasm he could fall into if he wished, though it would be an ignoble end when his wings, at least, had not deserted him. They revealed more than he liked, cramping together, against his shoulders, their angle forcing him to hunch. He felt the wall to his left, his flight feathers slightly bent where they met the stone. Dusk deepened; he couldn't see her face, only highlights where the orange light, fading to red and pink, blushed her pale cheeks and offered the impression of her lips, and the rest was gray like a storm cloud.

His gaze drifted to follow the curves - her lips, the line of her neck, the slant of tendons to her clavicle, the shape of her arms, and only jerked his eyes away when she came closer, close enough to touch. Close enough he smelled the faint dryness of her skin below her floral oils, and the honey used to condition her hair. He remembered applying it with his own hands, dissolving it in a little bit of warm water and mixing with his fingers until it was a smooth golden gel he slicked over her hair, combed in with his fingers, and rinsed with slim glass vessels of water until it was soft enough to put the finest silk to shame.

It was still as he remembered when he reached to touch the smooth, slightly curled hair brushed to frame her face. Soft. Cool. The ends tickled his fingertips.

"You're not sleeping well." Altina's palm warmed his cheek, and her thumb brushed the skin beneath his eye. "You're so thin-- aren't you taking care of yourself?"

Lehran pulled his gaze away. The flowers-- they were bright, sweet. "Don't be foolish. I'm fine. I haven't changed."

"Do you realize how long it has been?" She turned his face with her other hand, made him look at the glint of her golden eyes. "Sarai is almost five years old."

If he could have looked elsewhere without seeming a child-- "An infant."

"A little girl, now," Altina said, and the pressure of her fingertips increased for a breath before she pulled her hands away, slowly, her fingers curling as if to take hold of his robe. "She reads and writes. They say she has tremendous potential for the magic arts."

His face felt tight; his chest refused to expand for a deep breath. "And her father? How is he?"

Altina's brows knitted and creased her forehead with lines. She blinked, again and again and again, and Lehran thought she would look away and release him, but her lips flattened instead. "Her father-- he _cowers_ behind the dragon king when he should be home with his daughter."

Lehran felt his feathers shift when he backed away, pressed against the door. They were like a blanket, his wings and his hair, making the air hot and unbearable. His voice came out dry and cracked. "Can I be blamed after what you've done to me?" Her fingers clenched suddenly, tightly at her sides, the tendons standing out in the dying light. He watched her shoulders hunch, her chest draw in, almost as if he'd pushed her, and instead of trying to divine the expression on her face he watched her feet, watched her step back through a shimmering veil of heat in his eyes.

He wanted to breathe deeply of the floral scent she brought with her and follow it to its source at her throat, behind her ear, and soothe the tension in her back, the tightness making her draw in as he did. It didn't look right on Altina; she was strong, she was confident, she was a wall her enemies shattered against like the tide upon a rock. She was an night-blooming flower, cool and aloof by day, soft and fragrant at night when she opened to welcome him. Once there was only his own scent lingering beneath her perfume, his own touch a memory on her skin, and his own hand in the arrangement of her hair down to the knotting of the ribbon. Once, she told Lehran he was the only blessing she needed, that Ashera's favor shined upon her whenever she opened her eyes to see him in the morning and stroke his wings.

Did she remember that when her new husband laid his hands on her? That brazen-- that opportunist had the nerve to offer himself--

Did Altina bear his scent now, his mark?

Lehran stepped away from the door, but only to reach backward for the handle. He saw her tense. There was only an arm's length between them; he could reach her easily, take her in his arms, erase that man from her body and her memory. She would be warm, inviting, beautiful.

"I have no daughter." He might have had his birthright back at that moment, for how easy it was to divine her feelings on the matter in the way she flinched and the glitter of tears on her cheeks. His fingers clenched around the handle until the polished corners bit his fingers. "Go home." Lehran jerked it down and pulled the door open, wings angled to go out, and said over his shoulder, "I never want to see you again." The door slammed shut.

The lamps had been lit while they talked, all blazing and glaring in his eyes. The corridor was silent. Altina's gasps for air were muffled, and made him wish he'd lost his senses along with his galdrar so he wouldn't have to listen to them and feel his heart beat the same pace against his ribs. Any moment it would break free - any moment.

He walked away before Altina could realize he'd not moved and open the door, and the sound of her faded like a ghost, a nightmare. His cheeks were wet. The memory of her scent followed Lehran like the echo of her sobs - so he ran, and vaulted through a window, thinking again of neglecting to spread his wings. Night burned against his cheeks, cold as winter.

All he did was run; his own grandson refused condone the breaking of his sacred vows by offering sanctuary in Serenes. _What would Lady Ashera say_?

If only they knew.

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	3. A Taste of Eternity

**A Taste of Eternity  
By:** Amber Michelle

_This concludes the little series started by "Every Wasted Moment" ...more or less. I don't think there's anything else I can do with it. Actually, I'm surprised it went this far._

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Mountains and water paved the way between Lehran's villa in Goldoa and the plains of Begnion, where he once lived with a queen in a city they built together beneath Ashera's guiding tower. His wings grew tired at short intervals when he finally determined to see Altina again. They didn't want to carry him, or he didn't want the trip to seem so easy when he'd avoided it so long - for the danger, the distance, or so he'd always claimed. Appearing at her window would have destroyed the lie they wove to explain his disappearance; a retainer would see his wings and know the truth, that he lived, and the parentage of the girl who summoned him to Begnion would be brought into question. Such revelations had the power to destroy kingdoms.

He rested among high peaks the first night, where snow stuck between the rocks and swift, cold wind made descent from the clouds perilous. His wings protected him from the chill. Second were the young trees far south of Serenes, growing where only grass had waved the last time he passed over the region. Smaller, gentler mountains welcomed him many leagues above Sienne on the third night, where pegusi gathered and bred in the sparse, rocky forest. He found the river, and the knot of trees, where he'd first met Altina, on an evening when the setting sun cast rainbows through the rain. Tears clung to her cheeks like jewels and her hair was plastered to her head, dark as dusk, tangled; muddy, yellow petals caught among the knots where she'd run afoul of a kerria bush she couldn't see. Lehran remembered it like yesterday.

_Altina is dying_. A new memory ate at the ragged edges of his mind: three words, a pair of golden eyes in a strange face, and a pit in his stomach nothing would fill. Wasn't this too early? He looked up at the stars every night and tried to pinpoint how much they'd drifted.

Only-- it was only thirty years, wasn't it? Perhaps forty. Among the lower classes beorc were lucky to see half a century, but Altina was a queen, and her healers were as skilled as it was possible to be with only ten or twenty years of study - he'd seen to that before he left. No wars had been reported to him; no rebellions, though he'd estimated at the outset that at least one territory was likely to chafe under her rule within the first hundred years. But if it wasn't that, what could it possibly be?

_My mother is dying_, the messenger had said, standing in his wild garden on the slopes of Goldoa's eastern range, and she looked so much like Altina he could only stare and feel his throat seize, a bunch of yellow kerria blossoms clenched in his hand and held to his chest. _She asked for Lehran - but I was led to believe he died before I was born_. Sarai's eyes raked over him, lingering on his wings, the flowers crushed in his hand, and all he could say was something to the effect that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, and what on earth would the queen of Begnion want with him? He was only a shadow of the past. _I cannot say_, Sarai answered, and her lips were turned downward, her brows knitted. Her hair drifted on the mountain wind like a violet banner. Her long white coat drifted and flapped. _Will you return with me_?

This was another trick. If Altina herself could not convince him, why not this child?

Lehran refused, and she turned, leaving without another word.

She would never understand. He couldn't bear to fly beside her and stay quiet. How old was she? Had she married yet? Did she have any children - and what were their names, their ages? Did they favor magic, as Altina said Sarai would so long ago, or had they taken after their grandmother and inherited the twin swords? The words piled one upon the other, clustered in his throat, choked him, until Lehran thought he would be sick simply watching her descend to flat ground, where she called her pegasus and took to the sky again. Her image had blurred white against the clear sky.

She had wings after all. He thought he might have been happy for her, if he could only breathe.

Dheginsea would have counseled against going, and Lehran waited three days and four sleepless nights before he finally spread his wings and left. There were times Altina spoke in images of sands and hourglasses when referring to their time together, and Lehran kept telling her that time counted by an hourglass was never precise, and always too fast, for the slightest of commotions could jar the grains into diminishing more quickly. _You are stronger than that_, he said, his hand cupping her cheek, her dark hair sliding over his fingertips. _Why court despair, even with metaphors_?

They had time - plenty of it, as long as they savored each moment. Again and again, he told her.

Each minute, each hour, trickled down Lehran's spine like grains of sand, dragging him down. It seemed he would never reach the capitol. But when he finally did, fate blessed him with a moonless night to glide over the walls of Begnion's capitol. The streets were lit with lanterns and made a dull white map he followed to the Mainal Cathedral, though he knew the way - could have flown it in his sleep, even, had new towers not sprung up in the open spaces he remembered being around the compound. Candlelight shined behind the windows. His maples breathed and whispered in the garden, their voices almost audible but too distant to be called words. Lehran flew to the east minaret and landed on the dark stone floor that used to be his private space, sneezed when his wings brought dust from the floor and sent dead leaves skittering. There was no lock on the door; he felt his way down the narrow staircase with his wings forced close around his shoulders, one sleeve lifted to cover his nose and mouth just in case.

Mainal was just as he remembered. The marble floors were still polished and reflective, the windows still brightly stained glass, filtering starlight in faded shades of red and yellow. He whispered a spell to hide his wings, pulled the hood of his black cloak over his head, and walked up the dark staircase.

Incense left the air smelling sweet and tasting bitter, the tang of oil and pitch from the torches beneath it. The rugs were still red and gold, perhaps a bit faded; the tapestry depicting the birth of the goddess was still hanging opposite the first landing; the marble sculpture of dolphins leaping from the sea still marked the entrance to the private corridor they used to bypass the public places on the second and third floors, where Altina, or Lehran himself, could not pass through without being interrupted. His ears made out voices in the great hallways, and as he neared the room he remembered as his own, the one he shared with her many years ago, there were low murmurs, and one of them was Sarai. Instead of leaving the corridor and knocking on the door, he remained in the shadows and waited. The hall was quiet, the voices inside hushed, so he had time; if Altina had died, there would be a commotion.

She'd finally gotten him to return. If Lehran had known she would go so far as dying--

That froze the air in his lungs. The effort of keeping silent while he gasped for breath, drawing each in quietly, slowly, until his chest burned, left him shaking. Seconds crawled by, then minutes, trying is much-celebrated patience. Once voice left - a cleric, her golden staff of healing propped upon her shoulder - and then another, a guard, in the uniform of a pegasus knight, leading a small girl away by the hand. Her hair glinted purple.

Then Sarai departed, and the whispers fell silent. Lehran waited until he couldn't hear her walking anymore, and the air hung silent and dusty between the brass lamps when he left the shadows to turn the knob. The click of the latch was so loud it sent a thrill of terror into his belly, but inside the noise was quieter, dampened by the rugs, curtains, and tapestries. He crossed the room, ignored the herbs and tools on the table, the scent of camphor - it made him sick, that scent, the way it curled in his mouth and made him taste blood and hear screams, screams that should have heralded the greatest joy in his world, and instead brought upon him the worst of curses.

The double doors to her chamber stood open, but the gossamer curtains on her bed were drawn. A lamp glowed somewhere beyond the doors, and a chair creaked. Lehran heard Altina breathing a familiar rhythm. She was still awake. Her breath hitched, her voice came, a whisper - his legs trembled at the sound, and he watched someone lean to the bedside from the doorway-- someone who stopped, glanced his way, and went ramrod straight. "Who's there?"

Lehran wanted to turn around and run, but that would only insure his capture; then all of his vows would be broken - those he made to Dheginsea, in addition to the oaths given to his wife, who did not truly belong to Lehran anymore. He cast his hood back and walked into the light. Altina's guardian made to stand, but a thin, paper-white hand grasped her sleeve and pulled her down.

His eyes followed the spidery blue veins in her wrist up to a sleeve, from there to a shoulder, a throat carved with creases and thin, loose skin, to a face unrecognizable-- but no, her eyes were the same. Still gold, still round, and the shape of her chin - the strong thrust of her nose, her high cheekbones, the hair still long, but white. Which line creased her face first? Was it the one in the middle of her forehead, or the wrinkles around her mouth, or the crows' feet at the corners of her eyes--? He should know this, he should have been here to watch them appear and smooth them away with his hands--

Altina's lips shaped his name, and her voice was the same - weaker, deeper, but the tone rang in his ears, a true chord vibrating in every cell of his body.

Lehran's knees gave way; his impact with the floor jarred his teeth, made his head ache. He tried to speak, and nothing came out - not the smallest sound, not even her name. Not _my queen_, not _my beloved_. The pressure behind his eyes increased. Her strong brows dipped just a little - still so strong, so bold - and her lips curved in understanding, marking her face more deeply and showing in her wrinkles every wasted moment, every pain and joy discarded, all the things he loved and left.

He reached out, grasped her hand-- but it was too late.

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End file.
